Maura O’Connell: Irish Blessing

Here’s a singer I can’t resist, even if sometimes I get cross at her because once she covers a song, she pretty much ruins it for anyone else by hitting it so far out of the park that there’s no point trying to get it back again.

I saw Maura O’Connell years ago at a venue in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. It being close to St. Patrick’s Day, a significant segment of the audience was stoked for Irish!!! Music, especially one spirited gentleman wearing trousers in a spirited shade of kelly green.

O’Connell proceeded to flummox them with her own unique and beautiful take on Irish singing. Despite starting out with De Dennan, a traditionally-minded Irish band, Maura was (is) a pretty eclectic solo act — Irish as they come, but definitely marching to her own drummer. For the first 15 minutes or so on that South Florida night, she weathered occasional shouts of “Sing something IRISH!”, before silencing the hall with Gerry O’Beirne’s gorgeous “Western Highway,” after which even the guy in the kelly green trousers piped down and none of us looked back.

Maura O’Connell sings a version of the traditional Irish Blessing that, typically, sounds like nobody else’s. May the wind be at your back, etc. and Happy St. Patrick’s Day.